Questions of Style: Legal Drafting Manuals and Scientific Style Manuals in Contemporary English

In this paper we examine the style manuals of two areas of contemporary specialized discourse, namely legal English (LE) and scientific English (SE). Our aim is first to identify the salient features of the manuals relating to their respective fields, and then to examine some of the major similarities and differences in the advice and suggestions provided by such manuals to legal drafters and to writers of scientific texts. By carrying out this task we hope to contribute to a clearer understanding of the rhetorical strategies which lie behind the production of texts in these respective fields, conditioning the ways in which such texts are written. In order to make comparisons possible it has been necessary to compile two small corpora of roughly equal size, one of legal drafting manuals, the other of scientific style manuals.